IS  PROHIBITION 

A NATIONAL  BENEFIT 


A Frank  Discussion  of  Conditions 
as  They  Are  and  as  They  Were 

By  W.  RUSSELL  BOWIE 
Rector  of  Grace  Episcopal  Church,  Neio  York  City 

This  article  appeared  in  the  October,  1928, 
issue  of  the  Good  Housekeeping  Magazine, 
and  is  reprinted  with  their  permission 


[Y  QUESTION  is  not,  “Is  prohibition 
producing  the  millennium?”  It  is 
not,  “Is  prohibition  the  best  of  all 
possible  laws  in  the  best  of  all  possible 
lands?”  The  question  is  simpler  than 
that — “Is  prohibition  a national  benefit, 
or  is  it  not?”  That  is  to  say,  Are  Ameri- 
can life  and  conditions  on  the  whole  bet- 
ter for  the  present  and  more  hopeful  for 
the  future  because  prohibition  has  been 
enacted?  Let  us  hold  our  thought  to  this 
simple  and  limited  theme. 


Are  the  Facts  of  Yesterday 
Forgotten? 

The  question,  of  necessity,  involves  a 
comparison,  and  in  the  first  place  a com- 
parison with  the  past.  We  are  not  asking 
whether  prohibition  is  equal  to  heaven 
hereafter.  We  are  asking  rather  whether 
it  is  an  improvement  on  America  hereto- 
fore; and  whether  therefore  it  may  be 
believed  that  we  are  moving  forward  to 
something  still  better  along  the  road  on 


which  we  have  begun.  Our  capacity  for 
forgetting  the  facts  of  yesterday,  especi- 
ally when  a blurred  memory  serves  the 
purpose  of  argument,  is  great.  Opponents 
of  prohibition  are  often  found  attacking 
present  conditions  with  an  excitement 
which  would  seem  to  carry  the  idea  that 
the  old  conditions  were  more  or  less  ideal. 
One  might  imagine  that  in  those  former 
blessed  days  when  a saloon  stood  on  every 
other  corner  there  was  no  drunkenness, 
no  domestic  misery  and  degradation;  that 
there  were  no  police  courts  full  of  besot- 
ted- men  and  women,  no  jails  full  of 
drunkards,  and  no  penitentiaries  where 
men  went  for  crimes  committed  when 
they  were  drunk.  One  might  suppose  that 
in  those  days  there  was  no  drinking  in 
college  fraternities,  that  all  the  young 
people  were  completely  sober,  and  that 
society  generally  was  paradise.  Let  us  go 
back,  we  are  told,  to  the  good  old  days  of 
abundant  supply,  and  we  shall  have 
again  an  admirable  sobriety.  If  only  we 
will  welcome  again  affectionately  the  old 
regime,  all  will  be  well. 

“Leave  but  a kiss  within  the  cup 
And  I'll  not  ask  for  wine.” 

But  distance  and  the  exigencies  of  de- 
bate have  lent  enchantment  to  a view 
which,  when  we  actually  begin  to  remem- 
ber facts,  becomes  a different  matter. 

Vice  Conditions  in  the  Cities 

Have  we  really  forgotten  the  conditions 
in  America  which  brought  prohibition? 
Have  we  forgotten  what  the  streets  in 
our  cities  looked  like  with  saloons  dotted 
along  every  block  where  the  population 
[2] 


was  most  crowded?  Have  we  forgotten 
the  newspapers  with  half  - pages  and 
whole  pages  devoted  to  hquor  advertis- 
ing? Have  we  forgotten  the  sordid  and 
pitiful  dramas  which  then  were  enacted 
every  day  in  juvenile  courts,  in  the  night 
courts,  and  in  every  police  court  into 
which  came  the  muddy  stream  of  social 
wreckage  that  flowed  from  the  saloons? 
The  Chicago  Vice  Report  was  the  first  of 
the  epoch-making  social  studies  in  Amer- 
ica into  the  condition  of  our  cities.  It  was 
published  in  1911,  and  any  one  who  will 
turn  back  to  it  now  will  understand  what 
those  factors  were,  with  regard  to  liquor 
and  the  liquor  trade  in  America,  which 
created  that  tidal  wave  of  indignation 
leading  to  prohibition.  Says  that  report: 

“In  the  Commission’s  consideration  and  in- 
vestigation of  the  Social  Evil,  it  found  that 
the  most  conspicuous  and  important  element 
in  connection  with  the  same,  next  to  the  house 
of  prostitution  itself,  was  the  saloon,  and  the 
most  important  financial  interest,  next  to  the 
business  of  prostitution,  was  the  liquor  inter- 
est. As  a contributory  influence  to  immorality 
and  the  business  of  prostitution  there  is  no 
interest  so  dangerous  and  so  powerful  in  the 
city  of  Chicago.” 

Salocms  Allied  with 
Commercialized  Vice 

Then  follows  the  long  and  detailed  evi- 
dence of  the  unmistakable  and  disgust- 
ing alliance,  true  not  only  in  Chicago  but 
in  other  American  cities,  between  the  sa- 
loons and  the  liquor  trade  behind  them, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  commercialized 
vice,  the  seduction  of  women  and  girls, 
and  the  wide  network  of  police  corrup- 
[3] 


tion  and  sordid  politics  on  the  other.  The 
saloons  then  and  through  all  their  his- 
tory were  chief  factors  in  the  power  of 
the  worst  ward  leaders  in  the  political 
rings  of  our  American  cities.  And  how 
many  saloons  were  in  Chicago  at  the  time 
when  the  report  of  the  Vice  Commission, 
which  afterward  was  repeated  in  other 
American  cities,  was  made?  Seven  thou- 
sand, one  hundred  and  fifty-two  (7,152), 
or  one  saloon  to  every  three  hundred 
men,  women  and  children  in  the  popula- 
tion of  the  entire  city. 

Not  Merely  Benevolent 
Poor  Mens  Clubs 

Let  it  be  remembered  also  that  these 
saloons  were  not  merely  benevolent  poor 
men’s  clubs,  as  some  would  have  us  im- 
agine, owned  and  kept  by  some  benevo- 
lent friend  of  his  neighbors.  The  saloons 
in  vast  numbers  had  been  bought  up  and 
were  controlled  by  the  wholesale  brewers 
and  other  huge  organizations  of  liquor 
manufacturers.  Those  saloons  were  con- 
ducted for  the  deliberate  purpose  of  in- 
creasing by  every  means  possible  the  sale 
and  consumption  of  liquor,  and  in  that 
purpose  every  law  and  regulation  was  im- 
pudently flouted.  Furthermore,  by  whole- 
sale advertising,  and  by  doing  their  ut- 
most to  multiply  through  the  saloons  the 
army  of  drinkers,  the  commercialized  liq- 
uor interests  actually  succeeded,  in  a 
quarter  of  a century,  in  increasing  the  per 
capita  consumption  of  liquor  in  America 
from  ten  gallons  to  twenty-three  gallons 
a year. 


[4] 


THE  OLD-TIME  SALOON 
Charles  Stelzle  was  born  on  the  East 
Side  of  New  York,  and  his  subsequent 
work  as  an  expert  social  investigator  is 
built,  not  upon  theory,  but  upon  experi- 
ence. This  is  what  he  writes  about  prohi- 
bition in  that  fascinating  autobiography 
called  “A  Son  of  the  Bowery”: 

The  Old  Saloon, 
a Distinct  Menace! 

“Prohibition  was  not  adopted  because  some 
long-haired  men,  and  women  who  bobbed 
their  hair  before  it  became  popular — ^fanatics 
— not  wanting  to  drink  themselves,  did  not 
want  anybody  else  to  drink.  Prohibition  was 
brought  about  because  large  numbers  of  the 
nearly  two  hundred  thousand  saloons  and 
places  where  liquor  was  sold  in  this  country 
had  become  a distinct  menace.  They  disre- 
garded the  law.  They  sold  to  minors.  They 
sold  to  inebriates.  They  sold  on  Sunday.  They 
harbored  crooks,  blacklegs,  prostitutes,  gam- 
blers. and  every  sort  of  disreputable  people. 
They  entered  politics  and  controlled  our  mu- 
nicipal life.  Attempts  were  made  to  reform 
them  through  high  license,  low  license,  and 
local  option  and  model  saloons,  but  none  of 
these  seemed  to  work. 

“During  all  these  processes  the  saloonkeep- 
ers and  mainly  the  brewers,  who  owned  75  per 
cent  of  the  saloons,  laughed  at  the  public  and 
ridiculed  every  attempt  to  wipe  out  the  evils 
in  connection  with  the  business  until  finally 
the  people  became  tired  of  the  entire  outfit 
and  voted  it  out  of  existence” 

The  Saloon  or  Its  Equivalent 
Necessary  for  Any  Sale  of  Liquor 
I am  aware  that  the  opponents  of  pro- 
hibition say  that  of  course  they  do  not 
[5] 


want  the  saloon  back  again,  and  that  to 
talk  of  the  evils  of  the  saloon  is  to  talk 
beside  the  question.  But  it  is  not  beside 
the  question.  For,  in  the  first  place,  there 
is  yet  to  be  shown  any  method  by  which 
the  sale  of  liquor,  or  of  some  kinds  of  liq- 
uor, could  be  reintroduced  without  bring- 
ing back  the  saloon  or  its  equivalent.  And 
in  the  second  place  a true  memory  of 
what  the  saloon  meant  has  immediate 
bearing  as  a corrective  for  that  some- 
times hysterical  impatience  with  which 
people  treat  today  the  imperfections  of 
our  unfinished  social  experiment. 

Prohibition  came  to  this  country  be- 
cause an  increasing,  and  at  length  an 
overwhelming,  number  of  its  men  and 
women  were  sick  and  disgusted  at  the  so- 
cial degradation  wrought  by  a huge  com- 
mercial interest  with  which  contemptu- 
ous indifference  to  human  welfare  was 
entrenched  by  business  and  political  pow- 
ers to  capitalize  human  appetite  for  its 
own  gain 

National  Opposition  to 
Liquor  Traffic  Began 
Hundred  Years  Ago 

It  is  often  said — so  often,  indeed,  that 
the  smooth  phrase  has  acted  like  a nar- 
cotic on  some  people,  so  that  in  regard  to 
it  they  have  ceased  to  think — that  prohi- 
bition was  “slipped  over.”  “Slipped  over!” 
The  first  conference  of  a nation-wide  ef- 
fort to  oppose  the  liquor  traffic  met  in 
Boston  a little  more  than  a hundred  years 
ago.  The  question  has  been  agitated  from 
that  time  to  this.  Its  strength  at  first  was 
[6] 


wholly  among  the  men  and  women  who 
were  concerned  with  the  moral  aspects 
and  results;  but  to  their  side,  in  the  lat- 
ter part  of  the  nineteenth  century  and 
the  first  part  of  the  twentieth,  rallied 
other  forces.  It  was  perceived  that  in  our 
whole  industrialized  civilization,  with  del- 
icate machines  to  be  tended,  with  auto- 
mobiles on  the  highways,  and  transcon- 
tinental trains  running  sixty  miles  an 
hour,  the  community  could  not  take 
chances  with  men  whose  minds  were 
fogged  and  whose  nerves  and  muscular 
reactions  were  made  uncertain  by  alco- 
hol. 

THE  MATTER  OF  HEALTH 
Medical  science  also,  through  its  labo- 
ratory investigations,  began  to  make  un- 
mistakable the  evidence  that  alcohol, 
even  in  small  doses,  is  a physiological 
detriment.  The  life  insurance  companies, 
by  their  avoidance  of  drinkers  among 
their  risks,  added  their  testimony  to  the 
fact  of  the  damage  which  traced  back  to 
the  liquor  trade.  Because  of  these  forces 
together,  growing  hostility  against  drink 
and  the  drink  trade  was  steadily  pressing 
forward  the  line  of  its  siege.  First,  there 
were  local  option  laws.  Then  began  the 
movement  for  state -wide  prohibition. 
Then  came  the  Webb-Kenyon  Act,  mak- 
ing illegal  the  shipment  of  liquor  from  a 
wet  state  into  a dry  one.  Year  by  year 
the  steady  and  unrelenting  pressure  went 
on.  Year  by  year  more  people  in  America 
were  outraged  at  the  spirit  and  method 
of  the  liquor  trade.  Still  the  brewers  and 
distillers  refused  to  see  the  handwriting 
on  the  wall.  They  merely  fought  the 
[7] 


growing  public  conscience  at  every  point 
and  had  no  more  constructive  policy  than 
an  irritable  insistence  on  being  let  alone. 
No  partial  regulation  which  was  enacted 
was  regarded  by  those  who  promoted  the 
liquor  trade.  The  community  which  had 
voted  the  saloons  out  was  invaded  by  the 
community  across  its  line.  The  dry  state 
was  deluged  with  mail-order  liquor  from 
adjacent  great  cities.  Finally,  as  has  been 
said,  not  by  some  leader  in  an  anti-saloon 
organization,  but  by  one  of  the  authori- 
tative scholars  in  America,  Edward  A. 
Ross,  Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Wisconsin: 

Liquor  Traffic  Would 
Respect  No  Law, 

“A  long  and  variegated  experience  with  at- 
tempts to  regulate  the  liquor  traflRc  showed 
that  it  was  incapable  of  being  made  decent 
and  law-abiding.  It  would  respect  no  law, 
heed  no  warning  or  protests.  Always  it  was 
secretly  digging  under  or  insolently  breaking 
over  any  bounds  the  community  set  to  it.  So, 
not  out  of  a sour  resentment  of  other  people’s 
pleasures,  but  out  of  bitter  experience  with 
an  unmitigated  social  evil,  grew  the  sentiment 
for  destroying  it,  ‘root  and  branch.’  When 
parents  and  other  earnest  people  realized  that 
here  was  a sinister  thing  doing  its  utmost  to 
ensnare  our  boys  and  ravel  out  the  fabric  of 
sound  principles  and  good  resolutions  which 
home  and  school  and  church  had  been  at  such 
pains  to  weave  into  the  soul  of  youth,  they 
hardened  their  hearts  and  struck  it  down.” 

Public  Will  Hardened 
Against  It 

Not  without  warning  did  the  people 
strike  it  down.  As  early  as  1914  the  House 
[8] 


of  Representatives  in  Congress  had  given 
a majority  vote  for  the  submission  of  na- 
tional prohibition  to  the  people.  Month 
by  month  the  movement  gained  strength. 
It  still  might  have  been  postponed  but  for 
the  consistent  stupidity  of  the  liquor  in- 
terests themselves.  In  1917  they  succeed- 
ed in  defeating  the  bill  for  war-time  pro- 
hibition which  would  have  given  national 
prohibition  an  experimental  stage  before 
its  enactment  into  the  Constitution,  and 
it  was  the  reaction  among  their  constitu- 
ents which  compelled  the  Congress  which 
at  first  had  voted  against  prohibition  to 
submit  the  whole  matter  of  the  Constitu- 
tional Amendment  to  the  people.  Still  its 
enemies  and  half-hearted  friends  did  not 
realize  the  power  of  the  public  will  which 
had  been  hardened  against  the  liquor 
traffic.  They  succeeded  in  attaching  to 
the  amendment  an  unprecedented  con- 
dition— that  unless  it  were  ratified  within 
seven  years  it  would  be  void.  But  in  a 
swiftness  of  time  unprecedented  in  Amer- 
ican constitutional  history,  scarcely  more 
than  a year,  the  Legislatures  of  three- 
quarters  of  the  states  had  ratified  the 
Amendment  and  ten  more  ratified  it  aft- 
er that. 

Prohibition  Came  Slowly 
and  Steadily 

In  such  manner  was  this  long  siege  of  a 
century  “slipped  over.”  It  is  a curious 
tribute  to  the  intelligence  of  the  Ameri- 
can people,  if  it  is  supposed  that  they 
were  blindly  unaware  of  the  tidal  wave 
which  for  a hundred  years  was  rolling  in 
with  the  thunder  of  its  deepening  waters 
[9] 


upon  the  stubborn  but  crumbling  en- 
trenchments of  the  legalized  liquor  trade. 
“Slipped  over,”  because  at  the  moment  of 
the  enactment  of  the  Amendment  Amer- 
ica was  at  war  and  some  of  her  soldiers 
were  overseas!  But  the  Congress  which 
ultimately  passed  the  Amendment  was 
elected  before  America  was  even  at  war. 
And  through  what  bland  assumption  is  it 
argued  that  men  who  had  helped  to  elect 
that  Congress,  with  the  liquor  issue  for  a 
generation  a factor  in  the  elections  in 
every  state,  must  all  of  a sudden  be 
counted  as  a block  of  voters  who,  if  only 
they  had  been  here,  would  have  opposed 
what  Congress  did? 

Thus  came  prohibition,  slowly,  steadily, 
but  at  last  crushingly,  like  the  mounting 
and  breaking  of  a wave. 

Statistics  Sometimes 
Misleading 

What  now  are  the  effects  of  prohibi- 
tion? Here  we  might  enter  into  that 
deadly  realm  of  statistics  which  of  all 
methods  of  argument  can  be  most  mis- 
leading. Statistics  may  be  used  by  debat- 
ers like  a club,  and  their  hearers  can  not 
come  close  enough  to  the  figures  which 
they  brandish,  or  analyze  them  sufficient- 
ly, to  see  that  the  club  is  often  stuffed. 
Statistics  can  be  gathered  to  show  the  la- 
mentable effects  of  prohibition.  Statistics 
equally  challenging  can  be  marshaled  in 
its  support.  One  might  read,  for  example, 
the  statistics  with  which  Professor  Irving 
Fisher  begins  his  book,  “Prohibition  at  Its 
Worst,”  and  note  that  in  such  a city  as 
New  York,,  which  certainly  is  not  a fa- 
[10] 


vorable  example  for  prohibition,  the  ar- 
rests for  first  offenders  (which  is  the  real 
test  as  to  the  effect  of  prohibition  on  the 
generation  now  growing  up  in  America) 
had  decreased  from  twenty-four  in  every 
ten  thousand  of  population  in  1914  to  on- 
ly six  in  every  ten  thousand  of  population 
in  1925. 

Careful  Surveys  Made 

But  I do  not  wish  to  lead  into  this  maze 
of  detailed  figures  which  are  bound  to  be 
confusing.  For  clear  consideration,  it  is 
sufficient  to  mark  the  plain  conclusions  of 
the  most  careful  surveys  which  have  been 
made.  That  of  the  Federal  Council  of  the 
Churches,  issued  in  1925,  frankly  recog- 
nized the  difficulties  of  the  situation,  but 
advocated  the  maintenance  of  the  pres- 
ent law  and  its  genuine  enforcement.  Two 
years  later,  in  1927,  the  National  Federa- 
tion of  Settlements  made  a study  of  the 
results  of  prohibition,  assisted  by  social 
workers  not  only  in  the  United  States  but 
in  other  countries,  and  published  their 
conclusions  in  a notable  work,  “Does  Pro- 
hibition Work?”  The  final  words  in  that 
book  are  these: 

Does  Prohibition  Work? 

“Wherever  there  is  a Nordic-American  pop- 
ulation which  for  several  generations  has  not 
been  in  close  contact  with  the  newer  immi- 
grations or  the  cosmopolitanism  of  the  great 
cities,  there  prohibition  works.  This  is  true  in 
general  in  the  South  and  in  Maine  and  in 
parts  of  the  Mississippi  Valley.  Wherever 
there  are  large  unassimilated  foreign  popula- 
tions accustomed  to  the  making  and  use  of 
alcoholic  drinks  and  also  an  eager  market  for 
[11] 


their  product,  as  in  the  great  ports  and  the 
industrial  cities,  there  the  law  is  halting  and 
veering  and  difficult  to  apply. 

“But  the  reports  do  show  that  all  the  things 
hoped  for  by  the  advocates  of  prohibition  are 
being  realized  in  some  places,  and  that  even 
where  the  law  is  least  observed,  some  of  them 
have  come  true.” 

Boys  and  Girls  Growing  Up 
Without  Knowledge  of  Saloon 

From  the  statistics  of  the  counters  and 
compilers,  I would  turn  rather  to  the  sta- 
tistics of  common  sense.  Is  it  better  to 
have  saloons  on  nearly  every  corner  of 
American  towns  and  cities,  or  is  it  better 
to  have  those  saloons  gone,  as  they  are 
gone  now?  Do  you  see  people  drunk  on 
the  streets  as  you  used  to  do?  Does  it 
mean  nothing  to  you  that  your  boys  and 
girls  have  a chance  to  grow  up  in  a coun- 
try where  the  solicitation  of  the  bar- 
room is  no  longer  confronting  their  eyes? 
Do  you  know  of  any  railroad  or  great  in- 
dustrial corporation  which  would  like  to 
have  the  saloon  again  at  its  gates?  And 
if  it  is  not  true  that  the  conditions  all 
over  this  country,  taken  by  and  large, 
produce  upon  the  minds  of  its  people  the 
impression  that  America  is  better  off  with 
prohibition  than  she  would  be  without  it, 
will  some  opponent  of  the  Amendment  be 
willing  to  explain  why,  in  spite  of  all  the 
noise  of  the  great  metropolitan  newspa- 
pers in  the  unreconciled  cities,  and  the 
constant  propaganda  to  overthrow  prohi- 
bition, there  remains  the  stubborn  fact 
that  every  Congress  elected  since  1920  has 
refused  to  consider  any  amendment  of 
the  prohibition  law,  and  that  neither 
[12] 


great  political  party  has  tried,  or  is  likely 
to  try,  to  go  before  the  electorate  with  a 
demand  for  change? 

PROHIBITION  IS  NOT  TO  BLAME 
I know,  of  course,  that  there  has  been 
disgraceful  lawlessness  in  America  in 
reference  to  prohibition,  and  that  such 
lawlessness  is  a sinister  and  dangerous 
fact  in  our  national  life.  But  I challenge 
the  assertion  that  this  lawlessness  is  due 
to  prohibition.  It  is  due  to  deeper  causes 
which  have  infected  the  spirit  of  the 
American  people  and  which  are  evident 
in  relation  not  to  one  law  but  to  many. 
We  have  been  in  an  ugly  backwash 
which  followed  the  intense  exaltation  of 
the  great  war.  It  is  not  prohibition  which 
has  been  responsible  for  those  shameful 
betrayals  of  the  public  interest  which 
have  stained  our  recent  history.  It  was 
not  prohibition  which  arranged  the  sale 
of  Teapot  Dome;  and  it  was  not  prohibi- 
tion which  kept  the  facts  about  that 
transaction  so  long  and  so  industriously 
hidden.  It  is  reasonable  to  believe  that 
more  than  one  disappointment  in  Ameri- 
can life  is  due,  not  to  the  existence  of 
laws,  but  to  the  lack  of  the  kind  of  gov- 
ernmental morale  which  puts  laws  into 
effect.  If  it  were  really  true  that  it  is  the 
existence  of  laws  that  is  responsibie  for 
lawlessness,  then  let  us  conclude  that  the 
laws  against  assassination  should  be  re- 
pealed because  they  provoke  gunmen, 
that  the  laws  against  corrupt  political 
contributions  should  be  repealed  because 
political  treasuries  may  find  them  incon- 
venient, that  the  laws  safeguarding  prop- 
erty should  give  way  to  Communism  be- 
[13] 


cause  the  existing  status  of  property  cre- 
ates the  I.  W.  W.  When  gentlemen  in  our 
time  are  willing  to  follow  these  matters 
out  logically,  then  there  may  be  consis- 
tency in  saying  that  the  law  of  prohibi- 
tion ought  to  be  repealed  because  it  is  re- 
sisted. But  the  real  truth  is  plain  enough. 
What  we  need  is  not  a surrender,  either 
at  one  point  or  another,  to  defiant  law- 
lessness. What  we  need  is  a reawakening 
of  the  moral  vigor  of  America  which  can 
see  to  it  that  the  process  of  the  people’s 
will  shall  be  carried  into  effect.  I do  not 
sympathize  with  Billy  Sunday’s  theology, 
but  I like  the  shrewd  insight  which  he 
often  has  into  human  facts,  and  those 
citizens  of  America  today  who  think  that 
they  are  entitled  to  nullify  the  prohibi- 
tion law  because  they  hold  that  it  has 
moved  in  a wrong  direction  may  well  lis- 
ten to  Mr.  Sunday’s  homely  retort. 

Somebody  said  to  him, 

“Billy,  you  are  all  right,  but  the  trouble 
with  you  is  that  you  are  always  rubbing 
people’s  fur  the  wrong  way.” 

“No,  I don’t  rub  their  fur  the  wrong 
way,”  he  replied.  “I  rub  it  the  right  way. 
Let  the  cat  turn  around. 

''The  New  Emancipation  Law’' 

Here  in  America  we  are  engaged  in  one 
of  the  greatest  social  experiments  of  all 
time.  If  it  had  not  been  granted  before, 
certainly  under  present  conditions  it  will 
be  granted  now,  that  this  experiment  has 
moral  implications  also.  It  was  conceived 
and  born  out  of  the  growing  conviction 
in  America  that  the  manufacture  and 
sale  of  alcoholic  liquor  produced  in  this 
[14] 


nation  an  economic  loss,  a human  degra- 
dation, and  a widespread  poison  of  po- 
litical and  social  corruption  which  out- 
weighed any  imaginable  benefit  which 
could  come  from  it.  To  destroy  that  evil 
and  to  set  the  nation  free  from  its  results, 
the  people  of  this  country  enacted  what  I 
like  to  think  of  as  the  law,  not  of  prohibi- 
tion, but  of  the  new  emancipation.  And 
now  we  are  faced  with  the  question  as  to 
whether  or  not  there  is  sufficient  civic 
termination  in  America  to  see  that  we 
shall  remain  emancipated  not  only  from 
the  old  grip  of  the  liquor  traffic,  but  from 
all  those  forces,  some  of  them  hidden  and 
sinister,  which  are  willing  to  break  down 
this  or  any  other  law  in  their  defiant  an- 
archy. 

THE  ENGLISH  POINT  OF  VIEW 

The  eyes  of  the  world  are  upon  this  ex- 
periment of  ours.  There  is  no  greater 
name  in  the  financial  world  than  that  of 
Sir  George  Paish,  the  head  of  the  Com- 
mission of  economic  experts  who  recently 
came  from  England  to  the  United  States. 
In  answer  to  a letter  of  mine,  inquiring 
about  a speech  which  he  made  while  he 
was  in  the  United  States,  I received  from 
him  this  letter,  written  in  his  own  hand: 

“Dear  Mr.  Bowie, 

“I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I have  no  copy  of 
my  speech  at  Brooklyn.  My  addresses  are 
made  without  notes  of  any  kind. 

“It  is  true  that  very  large  numbers  of  peo- 
ple in  this  country  are  watching  America’s 
experiment  not  only  with  interest  but  with 
sympathy  and  hope.  If  it  is  successful  they 
intend  to  do  all  that  lies  in  their  power  to  in- 
duce the  British  people  to  follow  America’s 
[15] 


example.  No  custom  is  more  injurious  to  the 
British  people  than  that  of  consuming  alco- 
hol either  to  excess  or  in  moderation.  It  will 
never  be  possible  to  abolish  poverty  from  our 
land  until  we  abolish  alcohol.  The  efforts 
which  are  made  to  improve  the  condition  of 
the  submersed  section  of  our  people  by  edu- 
cation and  by  social  reforms  are  largely  neu- 
tralized by  the  effects  of  alcohol.  Against  the 
improved  condition  of  great  numbers  has  to 
be  placed  the  deterioration  which  alcohol 
causes  in  every  rank  and  class. 

“Persoanlly  I am  convinced  that  if  America 
can  persuade  her  people  to  have  nothing  to 
do  with  alcohol  and  her  present  law  becomes 
really  effective  because  it  is  accepted,  we  on 
this  side  may  hope  to  be  equally  successful  in 
persuading  the  British  people  to  abandon  a 
custom  that  is  responsible  more  than  any 
other  for  an  infinite  amount  of  mental  as  well 
as  physical  suffering  and  for  a large  propor- 
tion of  the  povertv  which  now  exists. 

“Sincerely  yours, 

“George  Paish.” 

International  Implications 
Thus  it  is  plain  that  this  great  social 
adventure  which  we  call  prohibition  has 
wide  international  implications.  It  has 
deep  and  immediate  consequences  also 
for  the  life  and  spirit  of  this  nation.  The 
morale  of  America  and  our  ability  to  car- 
ry through  to  right  success  a policy  de- 
liberately adopted  by  the  electorate  are  at 
stake.  It  is  no  time  to  swerve  in  this  mat- 
ter because  the  opposition  gathers.  If  the 
crosswinds  of  resistance  blow,  and  the 
ship  of  this  high  adventure  seems  to  be 
driven  partly  out  of  its  course,  that  is  no 
reason  for  cutting  the  rudder  ropes.  It  is 
reason  rather  for  a firmer  grip  to  keep 
the  rudder  true. 

(PRINTED  IN  THE  U.  S.  A.) 

THE  AMERICAN  ISSUE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
WESTERVILLE,  OHIO 


